Why is this our favourite case study so far? Spoiler - it has books, family, friends, coffee and quality booze—a handful of my favourite things. To be perfectly perfect, it would also have to include cooked food, but it would be just impossible, as you will read in this post.

Zumbido Books, Joana's project, arrived at our desk exactly one year ago. After spending the last decade working as a filmmaker for Canal 180, one of Porto's most innovative media projects, Joana had a plan: to keep things visual in her life and open a bookshop dedicated to the universe of children and illustration.

The thing about working with culture, creativity, and independent retail is that typically, there is no big budget involved. It is a lot of fun, though.

Zumbido is, as you guessed, a low-budget project, so we had to assist the client with most of the choices, from furniture and interiors to coffee equipment. Unfortunately, they didn't have a budget for an architect, which made things a little bit more complicated, and we had to improvise a lot.

Being low-budget also means a greater effort to create a comprehensive visual system that can be easily scaled at a low cost and be used by someone playing all the instruments: selling books, brewing coffee, doing admin work, updating the website, creating Instagram content, cleaning the bathroom. Everything must be printed on a budget home printer and be available as Adobe Express templates for simplified editing.